MODELING OBJECTS WITH A GENERAL PURPOSE POINT MASS SIMULATOR

概要

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Simulation programs are widely used in physics education. Most of them are special purpose simulators. That is, they are designed to calculate behaviors of some very limited range of physical models such as particle systems connected with springs, planetary systems, and waves. They can be easily used by specifying small number of parameters such as mass, spring constant, and gravity constant. Though these special purpose simulators are enough for elementary classes, they may not be sufficient for advanced courses. This is because, they cannot provide flexibility to accept and simulate novel models devised by students. With general purpose simulators teachers can inspire students to be creative, think new physical models, describe them, and simulate them. This paper shows that, in the domain of point mass systems, a general purpose simulator can be realized with a physical model description language and a physical model interpreter. Wide variety of physical models are described and simulated with this general purpose simulator. The simulator is implemented as Java Applet and run on Web browsers.